Art Katz addresses the critical theme of seeking honor from God rather than men, emphasizing that the desire for human approval can undermine our integrity and faith. He reflects on Jesus' rejection of human accolades, illustrating that true belief and service to God require a willingness to endure dishonor and rejection from the world. Katz warns that seeking the approval of men can disqualify us from receiving God's honor, urging believers to embrace the prophetic call that often comes with offense and misunderstanding. He challenges the congregation to recognize the subtlety of this issue and to strive for a faith that is rooted in God's acceptance rather than human validation.

Good evening, dear saints. You have opportunity to observe the phenomenon of the Word being birthed because something new that I've not before ever spoken, that's been gestating in my spirit, and I think it's for this occasion. But I don't know how it will proceed, if it will proceed at all. It might be over in 15 minutes and you leave all dejected and disappointed. It might go on through the entire weekend. I have no idea. I just know that I'm required to address this theme of honoring. So, for those who are called to be proclaimers of the Word, you can empathize and identify with me in this process of bringing forth something for first time with palpitations and to know that it's no, what shall we call it, no snap phenomenon. It's what's, I don't know, it's organic. It's heaving and sighing and gasping. So, if you're called to that privilege of being a proclaimer of the Word, you'll understand what I'm going through right now. So, Lord, it's my privilege both to proclaim and to demonstrate something of this prophetic phenomenon, and I'm asking again in the hearing of your saints, mercy. Mercy, Lord. Mercy, precious God. Trusting that I'm not going off on some tangent of my own, being led by some whim or propensity, but that there's something in your heart for this theme that needs to be brought together, needs to find expression in a place where more than once over the years seems to be the most inappropriate setting for a word of this kind. Nevertheless, bring it forth, my God, we pray, and edify and teach these young people about the responsibility of bearing your word and the manner and form by which it comes. Let them be disabused of any notion about professionalism or expertise or any of that kind of stuff, and let them know that this is spasm and contraction. This needs intercessors who travail before God. This needs invisible clouds of witness overhead. It needs the whole panoply of remarkable things, my God, that you will give because you yourself know what it means to bring forth for a first time a word that is on time and is the now present truth as it is in Christ Jesus. So come, my God, and humble us and temper us. Take from us any precocious notions that are glib and shallow and give us a sense of gravity and awe of the remarkable phenomenon of being bearers of your word. We thank you and give you praise in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, let's begin in John chapter 5 and get right to the heart of the matter. Jesus in conflict with his kinsmen, beginning in verse 37 of chapter 5, The Father himself which hath sent me hath borne witness of me. You have neither heard his voice at any time nor seen his shape. What a remarkable indictment to the most religious community in the world that has the history and tradition of Israel to hear this kind of statement coming from an itinerant preacher whose credentials are dubious at best and a remarkable accusation. You have neither heard his voice at any time nor seen his shape. And you have not his word abiding in you for whom he hath sent, him you believe not. Jesus makes himself the test of the truth of faith of those who are observing him that the rejection of him is the statement of their alienation from his Father and from God and from the very word of God because you have not believed him whom he has sent. I'm the acid test. I prove where you are. Your rejection speaks volumes and contradicts your every supposition about yourself. And you know what? That's just as true tonight as it was those thousands of years ago when Jesus spoke it, that our Jewish community is still in this condition, still Christ rejecting and not recognizing what that rejection itself represents. So search the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life and they are they which testify of me. These are colossal, staggering statements typical of Jesus. What's the word? How can a man not be an offense who speaks like this, who makes himself the test of the truth of the reality in God of a people who presume to have it beyond measure of all nations and to confront them with these stark, uncompromising statements that speak of himself and of the scriptures itself which testify of me. And you will not come to me that you might have life. So a man speaking like that has his days numbered. What agitation, what... I can't... I'm off the top of my head. I'm just not wanting to pass this by. I've not yet come to my text, but I don't want to pass this by too quickly because the issues are present and alive now as they were then and nothing more testifies to the radicalness of our faith and of the gospel than this unchanging rejection of Christ by the Jewish community and how a man like this must be such a patent offense who keeps drawing attention to himself as being the very sum of the truth of the matter put up or shut up by one who has no visible credentials and is a carpenter's son and comes from a city of the least regard in all Israel, Nazareth, and yet making these ponderous and exclusive statements about himself. So some Jewish-believing theologian, Yosh, J-O-C-Z, who has gone off to be what the Lord says, rightly, nothing more reveals the radical content of the gospel than bringing it to the Jew. Just to experience this kind of patent rejection, vitriolic, vehement, and bitter now as it was then, is to be taught or instructed or reminded necessarily, perhaps for the first time, what kind of message it is that we bear, how God has seen to it that it's foolishness to men and an offense to human sensibility and to religiosity itself. It's calculated in every way to rub men raw or to save them. And who of us will have the gut to stand and proclaim and bear some measure of this rejection and this offense by articulating this message? And maybe our failure to do that has reduced the whole value, significance, cogency, power of the gospel to the Greek. The world has lost the remarkable innate power of the message because we ourselves who are called to bear it have not recognized how deep and intrinsic an offense it yet is. And if we do recognize it, we want to shun the necessity of having to bear that offense. And so there's another kind of gospel being promulgated, another kind of message that has not the offense but has not the power. So I'm happy to review this as I'm drawing close to my text. I receive not honor from men. Dum-da-dum-dum. What a statement for the Lord. Would to God it were our statement also. I receive not honor from men. Because the issue of receiving honor from men is the issue, Lord help me to express this, that I'm intuiting and have never before ever expressed or declared, may be the fatal leaven that leavens the entire lump. However dear you are, and you are evidently dear and worshipful and all those things, if there is in you an iota of receiving honor from men, something comes, something is opened that negates the truth and the reality of what you are about in God, your integrity, your witness, the biting edge of your word, of what you communicate even in silence, is betrayed, contradicted and lessened if there is so much as an iota in you of what was not to be found in Jesus, namely receiving honor from men. I don't know why that this should be a theme of the Lord, or why he should lay it on me. I do know this, that when I stumble upon a colleague whom I've known over the years, this is not Mike Brown, who has become a doctor, something in my gut knots, because I know that it has been obtained through some kind of diploma mill, which if you send a check for $500 with an essay, they give you credit for your years of ministry, and you become ipso facto, in one fell swoop, a doctor. But you cannot know how fatal a thing it is to acquire that title by such a means. You understand, I respect Mike's title, because it's respectful, because it was obtained through labor, through an institution that is credited, that requires remarkable sacrifice and study and all the rest. But a check and an essay to obtain a title so as to make yourself a more illustrious figure, more commendable, more to be desired, gives you a little aura of prestige, maybe will increase the audiences that will attend you that would not have taken you seriously, if you could not be called doctor. There's something about titles. There's something about the honor of men that's in God's heart, you dear saints, that I'm groping and struggling to express on the spot, never before having considered this, until this began to gestate in my spirit. So I'm making a remarkable statement that this one thing you lack, this one thing, however much your spiritual life may be together and impressive, if there is a place in you yet, and likely is if you're not conscious of the phenomenon, that desires the honor of men, the recognition of men, the applause of men. Something comes with that which will enervate, lessen, negate, take the edge off, maybe rob more than we can know, the remarkable truth of what we're called to be in God. We need to recognize how deep and powerful a phenomenon this is. Who does not crave recognition? And of all the generations of men, who more than the youth of our generation, who are uncertain about themselves in an age of identity crisis, and who are we, where you need to be affirmed, and recognized, and patted on the back, and all of the rest of those things that our heart covets. So we need to recognize how natural a desire that is, how quick the world, and even the religious world, is to placate and provide for it, but we need to recognize how deadly a phenomenon, once we make room, and are open to seeking honor from men. When Jesus said, I receive not honor from men, it sounds like he's consciously resisting any attempt by men to placate or warm up to him, that he recognizes it, and he keeps it at arm's length, and when that rich young ruler came and said, good master, Jesus would not even allow that salutation to stand for a moment. He said, why callest thou me good? There's no man good but God. I refuse to receive your complimentary salutation, because if I receive it, I'm making such a remarkable concession to the spirit of the world, and its wisdom, and its ideology, and its mentality, that is predicated upon man, and there's no good thing in man. Jesus would not trust himself to man, though the men made the right conclusions, they saw his miracles, and they believed that he was the Messiah, but he would not trust himself to them, because he knew what was in man, and he's not going to receive this kind of compliment, why do you call me good? Because if I will acknowledge that, then that will assume that you also are good, and I refuse to come on that Judaic ground, I refuse to concede to this unspoken premise, that is the whole underlay of the world of humanism, that man is good. I refuse to receive your seductive salutation, good teacher, because if I do, I lose my testimony, I lose my credibility, I lose what I'm about, which is a total contradiction of all that is implied in the compliment that you have paid me. Are you understanding me, you dear saints? What was involved in the rejection of that well-meaning Jewish young ruler's complimentary salutation, good teacher, why callest thou me good? I refuse to receive this. I will not receive honor from man. Because if I do, I'm disqualified. Would to God that we were as absolute in our rejection. But I know you, that you have not the love of God in you. So what has this to do with the honor of man? Everything. It's the honor of man or the love of God. It's one or the other. It's... What's the saying from Kierkegaard? It's either or. You guys know who Kierkegaard is? Denmark's greatest gift. The philosopher wrote a book called Either or. It's either or, honor from men, love of God. But there's no possibility of equating the two together. They are mutually exclusive. I know that you had not the love of God in you because you are man honoring. And the reason that you're foaming at the mouth over me is because I refuse to play your game and condescend to your mentality and your unspoken assumption and ideology which is intrinsic to the world, the flesh, and the devil. I represent something other and what I represent cannot entertain or consider for a moment the honor that comes from man. Are you that insistent? Are you that radical? If you call prophetically, this is no small aspect of that call. I'm pretty much despised myself. I'm not your Mr. Popular. And that's remarkable. I'm just a nice boy from Brooklyn. How did I ever get into a fix like this that I've become so reprehensible and men cannot even tolerate the sight of me and I'm so odious and despicable. I am come in my father's name and you receive me not. If another shall come in his own name, him you'll receive. What an apocalyptic reference that is to the false messiah of the last days that Israel will shamefully receive. Then comes this great statement. How can you believe which receive honor one of another and seek not the honor that comes from God only? If ever there's a verse that I could turn into a branding iron and stick it into the flesh of saints that would be forever imprinted right on their bodies it would be this verse. How can you believe? Like ipso facto, faith is incompatible with men who seek honor from men. There's no way that you can believe. You are invalidated for faith because you have this propensity very much alive in you. You seek the honor of men. Therefore, there's no way. I can stand on my head. I can perform miracles. I can raise the dead. I can speak sermons on the mount. There's no way that you can hear me nor receive me or recognize me. And the problem is this. You receive honor from men. How can you believe? So taking the prophetic liberty which I'm allowed on occasions like this, I would say how can you serve? How can you worship? How can you do anything for God so long as there's an iota something alive and palpitating in your deeps that seeks honor from men? How can you? You're disqualified. Your worship is feigned. You might be impressed with it. You might enjoy it. But it's not the kind that he enjoys because there's a can. How can you? Something about honoring men cuts off the reality with God whether it's worship, whether it's service, whether it's witness. That's why your witness is feeble. That's why your knowledge of the word and every other aspect of the faith suffers in exact proportion to that propensity in you that seeks for welcomes and desires and craves and pants and palpitates for honor from men. I receive not honor from men is more than just a passive statement. It's an act of rejection of this subtle force which if it is allowed to find any kind of reception disqualifies Jesus from being who he is and disqualifies us from our identity in him. So I have never before spoken this, considered this. I wanted to hear myself tonight because I need to know this. I need to understand. But the Lord did not allow me to think it through. I have to speak it through on the spot. But if I am concerned for your acceptance and therefore I will temper my statements in a way or prepare it in a way for your acceptance and your honoring, we would receive tonight bapchus. You understand that word? You don't understand bapchus and you're going to be witness to Jews? Bapchus means zilch, zero, nothing. How can you believe? How can you witness? How can you worship? How can you serve if you seek the honor of men and seek not the honor that cometh from God only? What an alternative. But Lord, the men are here flesh and blood and how warm and how much does our humanity covet their admiration, their slap on the back, the chuck under the chin, pinching the cheek, well done, we enjoyed, we blessed. But to look at stony faces or hostile faces or disappointment as is often the requirement of those who will be serious about this is painful. It's the cross. But the honor that comes from God, when does it come? Rare that it comes in a way that you can recognize it. More often it's a delayed action on the part of the Lord who is saving it up for the day that we come into his presence eternally. Then we will be requited. Then the Lord will explain why he allowed you to do this, speak that, disappoint this people, offend here. All those kinds of things that were painful and had to be born without explanation in that day we will receive our right recompense and reward. Can you wait? You now generation that has to have it now, these all died not having received the promise but they saw it from afar off but it did not in one way lessen their faithfulness and obedience in their generation. But they did not receive the reward of the promise in their lifetime. It was deferred for eternity. I'll tell you if you have a mentality that can wait like that and does not need and is even offended by and resists any attempt to be seduced by the compliments and the acceptance and the honor of men, even Christianly speaking, and wait only for that honor that comes from God, you are a mocked individual. You're strange and even Christians will turn their shoulder from you. You'll be an offense even to Christians let alone to the world because you are so singular in your posture. You're looking eternally for recognition, the reward that comes from God only in that honoring and you can wait for it and while you're waiting you're even not only resisting the honor of men but you're receiving instead their hostility because they want you to receive their honor. You know why? Because if you receive their honor then you give them back what they gave you. You're playing the game. You're reinforcing them in their categories. You're establishing them in their unspoken assumptions, the predicates that rule the world whose wisdom is from below. If you both receive honor and extend honor. Got the picture? That's the way my Danish wife says it. Got the picture? I don't know how much the Lord tonight is touching something in the deeps of the malady of the contemporary church. Not at its worst but at its best. That we have come to a time now where as impressive as we have come in growth and maturity, there is this one last thing that God is fingering and identifying. It's the issue of honor. How can you believe who seek the honor of men and refuse to wait for the honor that comes from God only? The remarkable thing is if there's going to be an honor that comes from God only in order to obtain it you need now to experience dishonor. You need now to be Christ's fool and speak strangely and be an uncompromising figure and offend men, not just in the world but within the church. That somehow there's a logic, a divine logic that if there's an honor that comes from God for which we will wait jealously and refuse any other it's not just a neutrality in waiting it's a receiving of a dishonoring in this life without being able to explain yourself. Your own wife will not understand you. Your children will not understand you. That's been my experience for 41 years to this day. So I have to admit I did not know, I didn't realize how significant this issue is how subtle it is, how unspoken and how unattended that needs to be brought into our corporate and personal consciousness and that we need ourselves to avoid the trap and see to it that we ourselves are not flattering and complimenting and moving in that very thing that negates us and that how can we believe. We've got to resist either extending it or receiving it because we recognize that in it is a deadly virus in it is a, I'm looking for analogies and metaphors is a principle of negation that somehow to subscribe to this in however minute and subtle a way is to negate absoluteness in God is to negate apostolic and prophetic integrity and identity. Do you know what that means? How can you know if you seek the honor of men? Because the apostolic thing is dishonoring. Paul says we are the scum and the off-scouring of the world, the rejects. We are dishonored, we are misconstrued, we are is that an accident or is that intrinsic to apostolic reality? I believe it's intrinsic. Am I losing you? What's at stake here is the difference between charismatica and apostolic absoluteness and prophetic verity. That last distinguishing thing by which the church is the church is the issue of honor, whether we seek it and receive it of men or of God. I'm glad I said that, I'm on record. Thank you Lord, it's been said now, now we're guilty. Now we're found out, now we're responsible. The statement has been made. The thing that keeps us from apostolic and prophetic reality, the ultimate thing by which the church is the church that glorifies God and is the witness to Israel is this last prospect for compromise in a way that would never be recognized because it is so insinuated in the lump. It is so much part and parcel, the warp and woof of the world, its mentality, its whole complementary thing. Somebody wants me to be interviewed by Larry King. He's made hash of Joel Osteen and Billy Graham, the biggest and the best. He's chewed them up and spit them out because he invariably asked the questions in his interview. Well what does that mean then for Jews if they don't believe? Are they going to go to hell? And every one of them backs down. Joel Osteen, he kept saying, well I don't know. I can't say I don't know. I don't know. So that someone reviewing that interview said, I've never heard so many negations from a man in so prominent a place of ministry as Osteen with Larry King that he doesn't know. He knows only too well, but he can't say it in the face of that Jewish man. Why? Because he wants esteem and recognition and acknowledgment and honor and to speak the truth and the absoluteness of God and his word as Jesus did in the first scriptures that we consider tonight is to offend but it's also to save. And so some dear saint who was with us this summer at Ben Israel said, Art, you need to be interviewed by Larry King. I said, if you can arrange it, fine. He'll foam at the mouth. He'll get indignant. I've seen Jewish men in their own homes get up from their table with their veins popping out of their throats and go through some kind of histrionic act and fulminating about Jesus and their children and their wives looking up to them like he's gone mad. He was a perfectly civil man until some issue was struck by this guest who has come to their table who is a Jewish Christian and has said something or represents something that has so inflamed him that the man is like Jekyll and Hyde. What is it? There's something in what we represent in our message calculated and necessary. It must be an offense. The fact that we have not brought it indicates compromise because ultimately if we scratch deeply enough we desire the recognition and the respect and the esteem and the honor of men. And in fact, I'll tell you this I'm amazed and astonished how much you crave for this kind of recognition and honoring as it comes to you especially from Jews. If only a Jew will acknowledge you. If only a Jew will compliment you and you're on cloud nine. You'd rather receive honor from a Jew excuse the expression, than honor from God. What is it about you? That you crave their recognition because somewhere in the deeps of your psyche you admire them for their humanistic excellence and to receive a compliment from that form of life that you so admire uplifts you. The last thing that you can consider is offending a Jew and you think that somehow you're doing God's service when they pat you on the back and think that you're cute and sweet and pleasant and would to God that all Christians were like you, as non-offensive as you are. How can you believe which receive honor one of another and seek not the honor that comes from God only? I don't know how to be an exegete on the spot, but we need to be but seek not the honor that comes from God only. It's not a passive thing, it's an active seeking of an honor of a distinctive kind because you have refused the other, which is much more accessible and soul gratifying than that which comes from God that may not be immediate but deferred. Got that? You've got to seek. There's an active disposition of soul and spirit that seeks the honor of God only and if you have not recognized it, that's what I'm about tonight. On the subject of the honoring of God and not men I myself am demonstrating what it means to seek the honor of God and not of men taking ultimate risk in a threat to relationship with a young son in the Lord who grew up at Ben Israel with Mike Brown, one of the most eminent of the Jewish believers in missing it, but there was no alternative but to seek the honor of God by an obedience to a word that I do not have in advance and will be given me as I obey God to come to the text that he quickened for me for tonight. Listen, saints, this is standard operating procedure. Every obedience to God that seeks his honor runs this risk and if we're unwilling for that risk and want to play it safe and safeguard the relationships which are precious and hopeful for the future in ways we can now perceive we've missed it. So to seek the honor that comes from God only is to live with apostolic and prophetic absoluteness and daring with ultimate risk of loss in the hope of an eternal gain and a deferring of what the soul craves for now. Can you wait to hear well done good and faithful servant on that day but until that day there's no pat on the back there's no compliment, there's no assurance you're his fool. So in Luke 6, verse 22 Blessed are you when men shall hate you. What? You're blessed when men shall hate you? Yes. The very fact that they hate you is the evidence that you represent something so odious to men and so pleasing to God that you're blessed. Why aren't we a greater offense? Why isn't the world more angry with us? Why are we receiving such privilege and consideration? When they shall hate you when they shall separate you from their company and shall reproach you and cast out your name as evil for the son of man's sake. Well, not far from here is a prophetic entity whose name is known to you and I asked him one day some years ago I said, how is it that when you have your prophetic conferences I'm never invited? Because I was in this calling long before any of you. Oh, he turned to me with a moment of candor and he said, it's because Art you're not an in-house prophet. You know what he meant by that? Because you can't be counted on to be one of the boys. You're liable to upset the apple cart. I've seen you do it, I've heard rumors of how you've done it and we can't take the risk of having you because you're not speaking the conventional wisdom you're not following what is prevalent and popular now and what comes from you can be an astonishment and an offense and may even be a threat to our prophetic operation and mode of being in service so men will cast you out you'll be rejected can you bear that, saints? can you bear to be rejected, to be hated for his namesake? can you bear reproach and not be able to explain it? you don't even know why men are like that I was invited to lunch, where was it? in Nashville, Tennessee? it was really a trap they had me at the table and here was the question that they were all primed to ask how is it, Art, that there are so many men who are offended by you? how is it that you are rejected by so many pastors? how is it that so many are too fearful ever to have you on their platforms? of course, what they were fishing for is some acknowledgement that there was some defect in me that would explain that but I was so naive, I said, I don't know could it be that when I spoke in that church last on Ezekiel 37 the valley of dry bones that I made the remark that merely to endorse present Israel in a naive, charismatic and a Christian Zionist way is to be as much opposed to the ultimate purposes of God for that nation as to those who are in fact opposed your outward, external and ostensible identification with Israel in the conventional way is as much opposed to the ultimate purposes of God than those who are in fact opposed that's an offense to a pastor who takes congregations to Israel annually and has now become one of the leading Christian Zionist exponents of the present state of Israel I've never been invited back but I'm invited to other places like Zimbabwe, Singapore Kenya, Uganda, Cameroon Burkina Faso, my last visit to Africa and when we sat down with those black pastors and I said to them, I feel like a white cork floating in a black sea I looked at their black, gleaming faces, black as black and here I'm as white as white and there's every reason why I should be held at arm's length because even visibly I'm a symbol of something contrary to their blackness, to their history, to colonialism but the moment I opened my mouth I'm not boasting on myself, you dear saints they sprang to attention they straightened up in their chairs their jaws dropped, they listened something was coming from this man who said to them boldly I'm not just your whitey from around the corner I'm a sent man from the throne of heaven bearing sent words you know why I could say that? Because it was true they were receiving a sent word from God for black Africa like nothing they had ever heard because they've had reams of Americans coming over and teaching them about prosperity and church success and growth but the moment I opened my mouth power, authority, reality truth in their deeps how come? because to be rejected and hated despised of men in one place is to be esteemed and celebrated and honored of God in another got the picture? and the stakes are too great in Africa and in every other place for them to receive less than a word that comes to them from a sent one from the throne of heaven they must have a word for that continent, for those nations that comes from God and is not man-pleasing, man-placating but even confrontational, even accusative what's the word? fingering things about them that other white preachers would avoid lest they be construed as being prejudicial or speaking from a racial nothing, these men never once questioned that anything that came from me had anything to do with the fact that I'm white they knew it was from the throne of heaven they needed to hear that word, they needed to be confronted in fact, the great need in the black church in America is exactly of that kind so I'm still remembering one time, was it Seattle? the black church, and I'm sitting, waiting to be called on and it was the typical black gospel culture and some lady got up and said, I just want to say that the Lord has been good to me and blah blah blah amen sister, amen, then they called me up I forgot how I said it, but I said that was phony, that was false, that was black black gospel culture and it strengthens the artificiality the nothingness of what you are while your whole generation is dying in a genocidal way and needs to hear a real word from God and a real message and a real redemption you're playing a game of phony testimony that people are applauding you should have seen the pastor's wife, she was sitting in the front row her eyeballs were on her cheeks her mouth was ajar she had never heard anything like that the white friends who were with me that night they said, Art, we didn't know that we would come out alive it was a night where the Lord turned the apple cart with a black pastor who was also a bishop because to be a bishop is like being a PhD it's honorific, it's estimable and the whole phony baloney game is being played out at the cost of lives that are ending up in death in prison before they're 21 when I went out of the church that night the lady whom I had fingered as being phony she grabbed me by the arm, just as a Art, you said, thank you thank you, Art, you freed me you freed me from being a phony from being an actress, from being theatrical the moment you said it, I knew it was true but until you said it, I was being applauded God is wanting those who seek his honor only whatever the consequence supposing we had been attacked, supposing what? what's the difference? truth requires statement of an uncompromising kind not that you're looking to be controversial come on, guys, I'm in my 70s I'm not playing a sophomoric game that needs to be different or agitational but there's a struggle for reality, for truth life and death is hanging in the balance, eternity itself we can't afford to play or allow them to play when God puts a corrective word in your heart and mouth to speak it and let the whatchamacallit, the crumbles, the crumbs, the cookie fall where it will you figure that one out because rejoice in that day, you who are cast out for his namesake and leap for joy, your reward is great in heaven in heaven, not now can you wait for a deferred reward or do you need it now, do you itch, do you palpitate do you need recognition, hey, don't you know you are already accepted in the beloved and once you have that acceptance really have it, not theoretical, not doctrinally really have the knowledge that you are accepted in the beloved, what need have you for the esteem and the plaudits of men this is the freeing thing the fact that we still covet and need a pat on the back great message, loved it brother shows that we are not as deep in the one place of security that the gospel itself provides it's the only thing that will free us from the need to be acknowledged by men and will enable us even to be hated by them and to bear it with magnanimity knowing that we will have a reward in heaven how can you believe in heaven who seek the honor of men for you heaven is a category it's a superlative it's a word of a questionable kind that has no cogent present meaning because you cannot believe it because you seek the honor of men how can you believe in heaven I mean, you believe it, yes, you know, doctrinally but you don't believe it in the actual way that will free you from the necessity of receiving rewards now and to wait for the reward that comes in heaven for in this like manner did their fathers unto the prophets, they hated the prophets then they hate the prophets now, you know why because the prophet and the prophetic church does not seek its honor from men it's exclusive unto God it can be his fool in their generation and in their place something is alive in them in a reality that is of God that will excite the resentment of men and their opposition which we're willing to bear because we know there's a colossal conflict of a cosmic kind battling truths and systems of wisdom and value and if we stand with God and for God and seek his honor only we are touching that system at its deeps and you know who are the the prime movers of that worldly system of prestige and esteem and compliments of men what ethnic people are supreme in the pursuit of those compliments and in the promotion of them but us Jews, Hollywood hey you need to do what I do subscribe to the New York Times daily and read page after page of the fashion programs the theater, arts, music it's full of compliments even A.E. Scott the film critic and the way that they evaluate bring a critical appraisal of a new film or a theater, a play it shows that it's all predicated upon man upon lust, upon gratification upon compliment, upon human honor upon esteem and when you stand for the gospel you stand for the antithesis of all that the world celebrates as value and as good and if you refuse to receive their compliment you are striking at the heart of a whole system and threaten to bring it down as Jesus himself did and earned for himself the cross and you will obtain it also so well, at the end of Apostolic Foundations my brother was right, this is a remarkable book 30 years or more in the making for which reason I'm being invited now to Malaysia to address the ministers of that nation on Apostolic Foundations because some Chinese saints stumbled on the book and they said we have been waiting for years for a man who can come who represents this reality you can pray for that, Malaysia March 5th through 12th we will never come to apostolic blamelessness so long as we are self-conscious of each other so long as we continue to live out our life in the standard that is established in our relationship only with each other rather than as a life lived unto God and abiding in this divine standard we will fall short of his intention and glory we are going to be required to stand alone often we are going to suffer withering blasts of reproach and criticism and if our praise and esteem is of men we will not stand you'll collapse in that day because you're soft because you've not been what's the word when you're taken from the mother's breast you've not been weaned you've lived too long on compliments you've needed too long human acknowledgement and esteem and when all of a sudden you've got to face reproach you can't bear it, you'll collapse the dependency of looking toward men for confirmation for support, for acceptance, for approval needs powerfully to be broken there's only one thing that can break it namely the approbation and approval that comes only from God can you believe for that how can you believe for that who seek the honor that comes from men how can you believe for that approval that comes only from God when he is pleased to give it and probably not before the day of eternity but you're faithful until that day and you're his fool until that day and you're misunderstood until that day and you suffer the reproaches and hatred of men until that day even though that hatred is only lightly masked they'll betray you even in your own community and as they leave they'll go to every household and tell them why they're leaving that there's judgment coming on Ben Israel and hoping themselves to precipitate that judgment by bringing those families out after them and then as the brother leaves with whom I've been overseas in many places we've been in the house of the Lord together and broken bread and now has kicked up his heel against me and said you know Art, the only difference between you and me is your daily morning devotion well, that's enough difference right there so you know what I sense? Jealousy envy thinly disguised hatred even while we're together on ministry trips because there's something of a canker in that man's soul that finally led to a separation of a betrayal in the hope of even bringing down the entire community because of this thing probably the single thing that has most irritated Christians by me and there are many other things is that I would say that the word that I speak is not my word but the word that the Lord has given and they would say with a Brooklyn accent they cannot believe the incarnation of God in this flesh what they want to say is the message that you heard I prepared laboriously and thought through and studied and it's just my opinion based on scripture that pleases them because that's the way they want to live that's the way they want to be accepted but when they hear someone say who is radically cast upon God whose life is not his own and who says that the word I speak is not my word but his that offends them because it threatens a whole mode of being which at its heart is humanistic centered in man though it has a gospel trapping you'll be hated even by your own so let me close the approval that comes only from God if we have lived habitually in the light of the response of men needing their approval we will collapse there is only one who can stand under such a blast and that is a man who lives for satisfaction for one satisfaction only the praise that is not of men but of God who's a Jew? in Romans 2.28 not one who is circumcised outwardly but one inwardly whose circumcision is of the heart and the spirit and not in the letter whose praise is not of man but of God so don't get cute and put on your Star of David and your Talasim and all of the other shticklach by which you think you're taking on some external aura of Jewishness the Jew who's a Jew seeks not the praise of man but of God that's ultimate identification with God and it's available to you no matter what your ethnic origin let's pray saints for a church that is credible has witness and authority is sent from God God can entrust them with his word and with his anointing because he knows that it's not going to be misappropriated because he knows that the speaker is not going to celebrate himself whatever measure of success will come by his faith in speaking a first time a thing he's never spoken before he'll give glory to God he'll honor God, he'll tell them again I'm dust Lord, without you I can do nothing I'm a dead man, that's why I take communion every day that's why I need the bread and the wine because without you I'm dust but with you I can leap over hedges and overcome troops you're the praise of the glory of my life there's nothing for which I can take credit I'm a dum-dum, I'm sitting like a lump on the seat through the whole worship service feeling like what am I doing here, I'm capable of nothing Lord, precious God on high great apostle and high priest of our confession bless these children Lord look at this generation you know how fearful, how insecure, how needful they are for praise, for a compliment, for acknowledgement in this life of self-esteem that is so celebrated in the world and have forfeited the assurance of God and the acceptance that comes through and in the beloved that would have freed them from that necessity so Lord, I bless these children let them become formidable here in this location and elsewhere in the world and especially to the Jewish people and confront them with another mode of being that is heavenly and was put before them in the earth 2000 years ago by a Jesus who said I refuse to receive honor from men and he refuses now and refuses now even through his own people come my God, break us and wean us of any such cravening necessity free us to be what we ought in you we bless you Lord and thank you for what's in your heart free us up Lord, bring us to that totality in God that seeks your honor only may we be disabused Lord of the habits of the past of the disposition of our carnal hearts that crave recognition and honor to be called doctor to be esteemed, to be honored we need to spurn and to reject it as if it were a loathsome thing that if God required us to have an academic accomplishment for his purposes, we do not relish and celebrate the initials that it has obtained thank you Lord, oh bring us my God to the simplicity in Christ we pray break the power of the fear of man and the need for man's approval and give us a heart that seeks for that approval that comes from God only in heaven we thank you and give you praise in Jesus name, Amen